Britain's prestigious Arthur C. Clarke awards took the unusual step of announcing a "longlist" of 46 books published in 2008 that are seriously in the running. And the biggest surprise, according to the Guardian, is the inclusion of weird literary author Paul Auster, whose new novel Man In The Dark takes place in an alternate United States plagued by civil war.

The rest of the list includes a lot of science fiction stalwarts - Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown each have two books on the list. Also on the list are Nick Harkaway's Gone Away World, Patrick Ness' young-adult telepathy novel The Knife Of Never Letting Go, Iain M. Banks' Matter, Alastair Reynolds' House Of Sons, Ken MacLeod's The Night Sessions and Neal Stephenson's Anathem.

I haven't read any Auster for nearly a decade, but the description of Man In The Dark sounds really intriguing, and I might have to hunt down a copy. [Guardian]